Ah. Erhm. Well, it's the new Durnstorff method of calculating percentages. Very high math. Very advanced. Um. Yeah.
Oh what's the use? Kill me. Kill me now. Isn't there a delete button on this damn thing? Sheesh. Just hope no one I know sees this:p. Guess I better hand in my, ah... physics degree *blush*. Just one of those days I guess.... *sigh*
But yeah, you are of course right. It doesn't work that way. In a futile attempt to redeem myself, I sat down and worked it out. If a fraction a of population X is divorced and a fraction b of pop. Y is divorced, and a>=b, then we CAN say that a fraction (b + f) of the total population (X+Y) will be divorced, where f = (a-b)*X/(X+Y) (and f>=0 but <1). The fraction of total divorcees can also be written as (a - g) for g = (a-b)*Y/(Z+Y). Simply put (if I haven't managed to mess this up as well:p), the percentage of divorcees in the combined population will be bounded by the 2 individual percentages.
So, all I can say for sure is that the percentage of divorcees in the combined group of born again c. + other c. MUST be greater than 24% but less than 27%. How much greater depends on the populations (which should have been obvious to me even without the above) in precisely the way shown above. As for the atheists/agnostics, I guess we can't say anything can we? (except that the individual percentages must be between 0 and 100?:p)
Agnosticism is simply not knowing whether a deity exists. [words]...Agnostics simply realize that we cannot know, and form our beliefs from there.
"Do not know" is a far cry from "cannot know". Make up your mind. The former is a reasonable stance to take (if that's really what you think). The latter is a disgusting display of geriatric arrogance (most of the time) because it assumes that you are wiser than every single human being that will ever be born. Indeed, if you "cannot know" something, that something is probably not what one's life should be based on.
The parenthetic comment is for the one case where "cannot know" is a valid answer - when the question is stupid (yes, stupid questions do exist, notwithstanding what your teacher told you - it is simply a question that does not define its terms and leaves them as vague and in some instances as contradictory as possible and then revels in the resulting paradoxes). You know? Like the hoary old cliches about "immovable objects and unstoppable forces"? It is folly to assume that simply because a sentence is grammatically correct and satisfies the rules for interrogative statements, that it is automatically a meaningful question.
So, I don't think I'm an atheist because I actually do subscribe to "cannot know". Huh. Whaddaya know? It is ultimately all... what was that charming word you used?... ah - bullshit.
Good point but not quite the same thing. A music artist can (and does) still use recordings of random sounds from the environment in his songs (say traffic noise or any other ambiance). It doesn't become art until (well, not even then most of the time:p) it gets incorporated into the song.Violating a musician's rights in the sense of your comment would be using someone's music in your own song or mix and making money off it. And the analogy to that would be photographers taking a photo of someone else's art (a sculpture, painting or another photo) and making money off it. But yeah, it's a good comment because it should be used if this bs gets out of hand:)
Don't blame the Jews. Also, your data looks scrubbed because "born-again" and "agnostic" isn't an objective denomination, and you are missing religions that represent larger portions of the population as compared with atheists. Why clump agnostic with atheist.
Ah, wouldn't that make his point... oh, I don't know... stronger:p
That would raise Christians to 51% and lower atheists to something under 21%. Also, his 'missing religions that represent larger portions of the population as compared with atheists' is quite irrelevant. He's probably listing the religious affiliations with the 4 highest divorce rates or something like that (no idea, I can't read minds... without direct physical contact:D). Also, he's not 'blaming the Jews'. Dunno about agnostic (you may have a point) but "born-again" is definitely an "objective denomination" in the sense that people officially identify with it and the organizations related to it are populous enough and prominent it to make it a religion by itself, quite independent of mainstream Christianity.
In fact, I just saw that I was replying to AC and I raise my hat to you good sir for the quite excellent trolling. That's 5 minutes of my time I'll never get back:p
I think it's also fair to say that postmodernism is particularly challenging for those with a strong commitment to the scientific worldview, because some elements of postmodernism have challenged the more extreme claims made of what science can achieve.
Challenging them is all very well, but in the end doesn't really matter because in the scientific worldview, Nature is the final arbiter in the matter. From that point of view, everything speculative (which includes a lot of observational physics as opposed to experimental physics) can only be provisionally taken as 'correct'. There is therefore a fundamental difference between the 'correctness' of a theory as verified by experiments with control over the subject matter vs. ones that occur naturally (supernovae for instance) and that we observe indirectly in a manner that requires us to use certain other theories to perform the measurement. Strangely enough, it is true also of collider experiments. Consider how much physics goes into merely deducing the trajectories of particles in such experiments. If you're trying to look for exotic particles under extreme conditions where you expect known theories to break down, does it still make sense to use the standard model to calculate trajectories and energies? It's not as bad as all that of course, since there are iterative ways to do things and self-consistency checks and so on but you the dilemma.
Anyway, I ramble. What I really wanted was to ask you for recommended reading in 'sensible postmodernism' where they seriously tackle the issues you touched upon (instead of wallowing in mindless techno-babble a la Deepak Chopra - or Sokal's cretins). The terrain is packed with nonsense and I would rather not step in it more than I have to:p Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Business owners care about profit primarily, not artistic integrity. Ever worked at a startup? It's not like there's a dozen artists and coders that run the company. Rather, those employees own a small share in it, while the investors own most and the board makes all the major decisions.
If it's all so delicate and the board has so much power, I can see why most startups are one-hit wonders. Again, that makes me very skeptical about the probable bright futures of these so-called legends if only the big bad ogre hadn't acquired them.
Things like Google where the primary developers retain majority share while a company grows to any size are extreme edge cases.
Yes. 'Extreme edge cases' that include every single successful IT company since the computer was launched in the first place. Sure, not every such venture succeeds (that's rather obvious), but almost every single successful venture was once such a small venture. Your attempt to turn a universal phenomenon into a handful of isolated cases is quite amusing.
That is when suddenly the market starts hurting and companies making worse crap end up making more money, like really good games being crippled or killed because they threaten Windows market dominance in some way by promoting standards compliant APIs or cross platform development tools and practices.
I have no quarrel with you on the standards end of things but I really don't think it makes sense to complain about a luxury good (games) and expect people to feel all outraged about it. While I would probably agree with you personally about what games are 'good' and what are trash (having grown up Legend and Sierra and the beginning of the consoles - Atari and NES) but clearly most people today don't agree with us as they continue to blow money on the trash and keep the 'evil companies' afloat while killing the 'good guys' (ok, some snark here). The people seem to have spoken and all we can do is rage impotently at the philistines with joysticks.
I do wish people would remember that in this country at least, it takes two sides to make a business transaction - the buyer and the seller.
Sure it does, but one side has all the money and power that's not much comfort.
The point is that the ONE good thing about small startups is their legendary freedom. If they really believed in their product and their creativity (which is really what my 'artistic integrity' comment was aimed at), they would shun any buyout offers - not because of any principle - but simply because they believed they could run the frigging goliaths out of business a decade down the road. THAT is what separates the one hit wonder from a BUSINESS LEADER.
The whole refrain of "MS bought it and it's ruined", while containing a tiny kernel of truth, is ultimately based on flawed logic.
It's not based on logic at all. It's an observed phenomenon. Let's see Bungie has the next generation of their innovative products as playable demos on multiple platforms, then MS buys them and nothing is released for years then, what comes out only runs on Windows and has fewer features not only than the demoes they had shown but than the previous generation of those games. There's no logic being applied here, it's just what happened again and again.
Ah! You bit. I'm glad. If what you said is true and the industry has sen this time and time again, these same people continue to sell out to MS, clearly not giving a shit about their precious products. You are absolutely right that we the consumers lose out in the deal and I'm not an idiot to argue about that FACT. What I'm more irritated by is the complete absence of blame where the SELLER is concerned. As if they were perfectly justified in selling out but the big bad MS was clearly a monster for daring to acquire another company.
I think philosophy is a better sparring partner than religion, because that's one of its tasks -- to challenge assumptions and to tighten up reasoning (ok, two of its tasks).
True. I just hope the postmodern school (Sokal's Fashionable Nonsense was as depressing as it was funny) will eventually fade away to the obscurity it deserves and some actual philosophers start doing this job again. You know? We expect this kind of crap from the religs. It hurts when the philosophers start going mad hatter on you:(. I recall the joy of reading Spinoza, Leibniz and even Descartes and feeling that these were men who actually yearned to understand the world around them. The postmodern hack writing exudes the "I couldn't give a good goddamn about reality" stink that never leads to any any new understanding.
Considering that the term itself (which you were careful not to spell out) stands for "Intelligence Quotient", it is a bit disingenuous to try to distance it from intelligence. That aside, I see no problem with your explanation. It seems to be just another casualty (among thousands others) of the scientific naming process gone horribly wrong.
And by the way, it is not that we can't define intelligence. It is simply that once defined, there is a tendency to try to cram too much meaning and value judgments into that definition. This renders definitions of contentious subjects fluid and ultimately useless as they never settle into an equilibrium of consensus. I've had this sort of argument before about 'life'. Pragmatic, working definitions exist in biology (just as they do for 'intelligence') but people refuse to accept them because they want to imbue these (attractive) terms with every possible meaning they can - in most cases, compensating for abilities they don't have by appending said definitions with qualities they do have.
Sociologically reasonable, but wreaks havoc with any attempt at a rational and objective understanding of human ability. Rule of thumb - anytime a metric is used for something concrete (like a job or even mating acceptability), expect people to pull this kind of dirty trick. Have you ever met people (why is it usually women?) who claimed they were vegetarian and ate only fish and vegetables? Or the hangers-on in the so-called 'Green movement' sweeping the world these days? Hell, going back to my 'life' example, I wouldn't be surprised if when zombies finally starting coming out of their graves, the first thing they do is redefine 'life' so it includes them. And then yell "braaaaaaaains" but what can ya do? It's just their low IQ.
You've put together a lovely homage to MS's buying out and ruining of good game companies since every good game you came up with was developed by a company that MS bought out after they made something good, or which you thought was made by MS but was actually not. More than half the companies no longer exist having been mothballed by MS.
Since it has been so obvious that companies are ruined when MS buys them (I've been hearing this for the past 10+ years), these small company owners clearly don't give a F*** about their artistic integrity. If they had such incredibly low confidence in themselves that they sold out to the evil Goliath instead of continuing to make great products and profiting off them, why should I believe that they had anything left to offer? I do wish people would remember that in this country at least, it takes two sides to make a business transaction - the buyer and the seller. The whole refrain of "MS bought it and it's ruined", while containing a tiny kernel of truth, is ultimately based on flawed logic. If these companies really had more innovation to offer the world and they felt it could be profitable, they would not have sold out to MS.
That isn't true at all...how many people do you know who sit there saying they have to quit, it's disgusting, etc while they have a cig in their mouth? I have personally known a number of people like that (all of whom smoked more than a pack a day, btw)
I wouldn't take that too seriously. That's just the socially acceptable way of indulging in a vice. Call it a ritual self-punishment if you will as payment for continuing the vice.
I agree, but for a different reason. I'm a non-smoker, teetotaler and never did drugs either but I still call bs on this study for the simple reason that IQ is another one of those metrics that have some value but is nowhere near as sharp as people would have us believe. The differences (while statistically significant), are only as meaningful as the metric itself. In other words, the study proves that a certain metric that is measured in a certain way (IQ) is correlated with smoking behavior. The uncertainty in mapping that metric to 'actual' intelligence' probably far outweighs the tiny differences observed.
You should keep in mind though that your 'health' is usually taken to mean the state of your body, which includes the brain. It is quite plausible that the physiological effects of smoking extend to the brain. In any case, that's a risk you take.
Doing something you know is bad for you != low intelligence
That's why I distinguish between 'potential intelligence' and 'kinetic intelligence' (especially when judging myself - my kinetic intelligence is rather poor for instance:p). I trust the distinction is clear?
Nice. I think that certainly is part of it. The last paragraph is particularly poignant in light of an argument I was involved in a few days ago on here about how even scientific fact can become just another dogma to be followed unless a person actually works out a theorem himself/herself or at the very least watches someone else do this in detail.
I was arguing then about the necessity of mathematics as well as empirical evidence as the two pillars of real science. I can see now how that naturally extends to the third paragraph you quoted above. It is clearly no accident that a PhD candidate's rite of passage is the thesis defense. It is also why scientific ideas get stronger and more robust over time - this merciless yet dispassionate attack from within that tempers the steel as only a trial by fire can (mangled metaphor alert! - but it's 5am so the grammar gods forgive).
In a sense then, I guess what I was trying to articulate (now that you've given me the framework to think about it), is that religion, while it may have nothing meaningful to say about Nature, plays a crucial role in being the constant opposition. It keeps us honest (though that is not its purpose) - an important thing when you consider how tempting it is for science to lie for the good of humanity.
To drag another analogy into the fray, it is science's sparring partner with the added twist that it's got a horseshoe in its glove. While that may hurt from time to time, it provides us a greater incentive to make sure the punch doesn't land;-). As a wise webcomic artist once wrote - 'Science is limited by its refusal to make stuff up. That's what gives religion its edge'. That's an edge I gladly forfeit.
I see what you're saying but I think you misunderstand me. It is not that I think the religs' ground is worthy of examination or that I think anything new will be gained there. It's simply that their very existence provides an emotional incentive for debunkers to do their work. While there is an infinite number of things a scientist could look into, the actual number of things is quite short considering the constraints he/she faces (funding, interest, etc.) Religion and the few dark spots on the map it represents provides an emotional incentive to try to find scientific explanations for phenomena. Now, the value in debunking such things is negligible but consider the collateral gain in knowledge as a result (in this very story for example).
If NDEs had existed but religs (and a LOT of new age flakes) hadn't made such a big deal over them in terms of supporting their beliefs using them, how much importance would it have gained? Would these researchers have been quite so interested in this problem? Now we know something more about brain chemistry. Scientific explanations of previously religious phenomena do little to bring rationality to the world, but the gain in knowledge is tremendous. I've always been a fan of using an irrelevant emotional response as raw fuel to drive me in an intellectually important but not as emotionally exciting direction.
This is probably a weak example. A better one is in psychology (why people believe weird things) or in evolutionary biology (why does humanity have the religion bug so firmly entrenched within it?).
I know these seem like weak arguments. Like I said, this is not all I have to say but I have a really hard time articulating this particular feeling I have about the utility of the existence of religion (if not religion itself) to science. I think it's crucial though. Almost like irrationality needs to be present in the world so that people can escape it and grow stronger as a result. I would be truly sad to see it disappear entirely (though it won't happen for millennia more, if ever), if only for the same reason we store the smallpox virus.
I know you're joking but I should say that calculus and error analysis (part of statistics) are quite solidly intertwined. So, yes. Any practicing scientist does use calculus, though sometimes it comes disguised as statistical analysis. How about curve fitting? Least squares analysis rests firmly on calculus. So, you might not be doing dy/dx or contour integrals but you are using calculus even in the social sciences. If you don't see that explicitly, it just means you're using a packaged tool for the purpose (which is fine - reinventing the wheel is a good exercise, but necessary only in the classroom - elsewhere it's optional).
You are, unfortunately correct. However, I for one am satisfied to see the ground that the religs stand on shrink steadily, though asymptotically to nothing. I won't begrudge them that last minuscule standing space as long as I have the rest of reality to call home;-).
Note also that as a practical matter, irrationality provides a substantial incentive for people who embody rationality. It scares me sometimes, but we owe a great deal to the religs for pointing out exactly what needs to be looked at. They're like the guys with the flags on golf courses;-)
Quite right. But then again, if 'proof' were a valid criterion in religion, nothing would say anything about heaven:p. It does say a LOT about the 'evidence' that people present to 'prove' the existence of heaven. Wanna believe in heaven? - go for it. Just don't do anything as inane as attempting to justify it rationally (as so many people are wont to do).
It's rather amusing how the descriptions of heaven have had to be upgraded every generation (and in the process made more vague and abstract) as reality catches up by making life on earth better and better. Heaven for a second century man would probably have been close to living on modern day Earth - even in a third world slum. Heaven for a second century noblewoman would have been close to living in any western country after the middle ages as an ordinary woman.
Further, (and this is purely speculative so I welcome any facts from y'all) it may have to do with other ebook retailers putting the pressure on the publishers to stop Amazon from marking down these prices because the disparity in prices is REALLY REALLY REALLY freaking absurd. Have you compared prices between Amazon and any of the other retailers recently (like Mobipocket.com, fictionwise, cyberread, B&N, ebooks.com(iirc?), etc.)? I always do before buying ebooks and the difference is unmistakable. I wonder how many people have chosen the Kindle over the Nook purely because of this?
I guess the publishers (years of experience working against them I fear) might be thinking that Amazon couldn't possibly stay afloat with this pricing model and don't want to see the other retailers go out of business as well. I for one am glad that Baen (the only publisher with any degree of sense about ebooks) has a few authors I actually like - they actually sell DRM free books and do very well. You guys should check out Eric Flint's writing on the matter (http://www.baen.com/library/). It is very refreshing to see an author (with the full support of his publishing house) writing something so exquisitely sensible about DRM and piracy and the whole "authors getting ripped off" crop of shenanigans.
Just remember that corporations, while proclaiming the virtues of the free market on the one hand, will gladly blow anyone (including the government or even their competitors) for a bit of protectionist backscratching. In fact, this whole Amazon debacle stinks to me of a Survivor-like scenario where the best people are knocked out early. There are no Hank Reardens or Dagny Taggarts in the real world - the sooner we accept it and move on, the lesser the number of ulcers we have to suffer through:p
I will stress again (for skimmers - NTTAWWT) - this is purely speculative. It seems plausible to me but I have no facts about this.
Undisciplined people can't do great irreversible damage!
That's what I thought about the US. Hell, 8 years of incompetence and the country strong as ever (back in 2008) - I figured that's a great stress test for the economy. And then it just collapsed. Yes, a national economy largely runs on autopilot, but the reason for it is the tremendous inertia it has a result of its sheer size. What one must remember is that a very large object, while stable in motion, is equally difficult to divert when it's rushing headlong off a cliff. I guess while the undisciplined people themselves probably can't do much damage (I don't think I would blame Dubya personally for most of the things that are wrong with the economy today), they serve as a catalyst for the real opportunists to do the damage. In his case, he tended to collect people based on loyalty rather than ability - hardly a good choice for running something as complex as a country. I think that was his only real crime (everything else was politics as usual) and that incompetence did do a lot of irreversible damage.
To get back to India, while a 1984-style fiasco is not possible (for the reason you mentioned), it has led to unscrupulous bastards (usually criminals) taking over local governance in many of the major cities. The local and state governments are strong as compared to the central, but they are hives of corruption because they are largely isolated from the greater political scene. At this moment in its history, corporations are probably the only constructive force left in India.
Unfortunately, my snark-generator wasn't working too well when I wrote it and it came off as too sincere in the iPad-bashing department. Indeed, the thing actually looks quite nice and I would probably even get it if I had any use for it and if it was in my price range, neither of which are true at the moment;-)
Re:Here come the DRM whiners
on
Apple iPad Reviewed
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Let me ask you something in advance of the inevitable comments, for a chance: do you complain because the firmware in your TV set, microwave oven, and dishwasher is "locked down," too?
You're right. Considering that the tablet in question is about as versatile as the appliances you mentioned, I now have no complaints about it being locked down. Just lock it away somewhere and my joy will be complete.
I suspect string theory is wrong because it's too complex. I think at the core of all physics must be simplicity. If you get as complicated as string theory I think you're heading down the wrong path.
Physics, when distilled, should be elegant. When Einstein proposed mass-energy equivalence with a formula it changed the world - not because it was a complex relationship that only physicists could understand, but because it was so incredibly simple that it HAD to be right.
No, it changed the world because it worked. It predicted certain things that were observed to be dead-on. If it's science we're talking about, beauty must always take a back seat to utility (in the sense that a principle works - not so much that it should be useful to humanity). The halls of physics are littered with the corpses of beautiful theories that (unfortunately) failed this test.
There is a difference between 'simple' and 'easy'. The former has to do with the structure (of a theory or principle) and the latter, with actually being able to work with it at a mathematical level. Given that distinction, all physics is simple, even String theory. Depending on your level of expertise, no part of physics might be easy. People often misinterpret this frustration by concluding that the principle itself is complex (or worse, complicated).
And there really is no reason why the GUT (if it exists) should be simple. We can only say at this point that so far, the principle of simplicity seems to have worked well in finding useful theories and there is good reason to think that that will continue. But to believe that this is necessarily true (and more than a few physicists are guilty of this) is perverting science into mysticism.
providing continuous funding for non-disprovable theories for over 20 years...
Fixed that for you. Try to focus on what's really important, will you?
While I'm no lovesick fan of string theory, fair's fair - there hasn't really been much funding for it until 5-6 years ago when Brian Greene's book came out and there was an explosion of interest in it (this was related to some real mathematical progress in the field by Witten that really raised some hopes). Before that, it was really struggling as a field - most funding was private in the form of endowed professorships or positions at places like the IAS in Princeton.
Slashdot Mirror
*whew* For a moment there, I thought I was gonna have to retake the entrance exam ...
Wow. That's just ... wow. Howard Roark must be spinning in his fictitious grave :)
_______
*(to see what constitutes 'standing up for your artistic rights' these days)
Just to be clear, I retract only the math part of the original. Everything else was reasonable I think.
That would raise Christians to 51%
I don't think percentages work like that.
Ah. Erhm. Well, it's the new Durnstorff method of calculating percentages. Very high math. Very advanced. Um. Yeah.
:p. Guess I better hand in my, ah ... physics degree *blush*. Just one of those days I guess .... *sigh*
:p), the percentage of divorcees in the combined population will be bounded by the 2 individual percentages.
:p)
:p
Oh what's the use? Kill me. Kill me now. Isn't there a delete button on this damn thing? Sheesh. Just hope no one I know sees this
But yeah, you are of course right. It doesn't work that way. In a futile attempt to redeem myself, I sat down and worked it out. If a fraction a of population X is divorced and a fraction b of pop. Y is divorced, and a>=b, then we CAN say that a fraction (b + f) of the total population (X+Y) will be divorced, where f = (a-b)*X/(X+Y) (and f>=0 but <1). The fraction of total divorcees can also be written as (a - g) for g = (a-b)*Y/(Z+Y). Simply put (if I haven't managed to mess this up as well
So, all I can say for sure is that the percentage of divorcees in the combined group of born again c. + other c. MUST be greater than 24% but less than 27%. How much greater depends on the populations (which should have been obvious to me even without the above) in precisely the way shown above. As for the atheists/agnostics, I guess we can't say anything can we? (except that the individual percentages must be between 0 and 100?
Icanhasgeekcard back now?
Agnosticism is simply not knowing whether a deity exists. [words]...Agnostics simply realize that we cannot know, and form our beliefs from there.
"Do not know" is a far cry from "cannot know". Make up your mind. The former is a reasonable stance to take (if that's really what you think). The latter is a disgusting display of geriatric arrogance (most of the time) because it assumes that you are wiser than every single human being that will ever be born. Indeed, if you "cannot know" something, that something is probably not what one's life should be based on.
... what was that charming word you used? ... ah - bullshit.
The parenthetic comment is for the one case where "cannot know" is a valid answer - when the question is stupid (yes, stupid questions do exist, notwithstanding what your teacher told you - it is simply a question that does not define its terms and leaves them as vague and in some instances as contradictory as possible and then revels in the resulting paradoxes). You know? Like the hoary old cliches about "immovable objects and unstoppable forces"? It is folly to assume that simply because a sentence is grammatically correct and satisfies the rules for interrogative statements, that it is automatically a meaningful question.
So, I don't think I'm an atheist because I actually do subscribe to "cannot know". Huh. Whaddaya know? It is ultimately all
Good point but not quite the same thing. A music artist can (and does) still use recordings of random sounds from the environment in his songs (say traffic noise or any other ambiance). It doesn't become art until (well, not even then most of the time :p) it gets incorporated into the song.Violating a musician's rights in the sense of your comment would be using someone's music in your own song or mix and making money off it. And the analogy to that would be photographers taking a photo of someone else's art (a sculpture, painting or another photo) and making money off it. But yeah, it's a good comment because it should be used if this bs gets out of hand :)
Don't blame the Jews. Also, your data looks scrubbed because "born-again" and "agnostic" isn't an objective denomination, and you are missing religions that represent larger portions of the population as compared with atheists. Why clump agnostic with atheist.
Ah, wouldn't that make his point ... oh, I don't know ... stronger :p
... without direct physical contact :D). Also, he's not 'blaming the Jews'. Dunno about agnostic (you may have a point) but "born-again" is definitely an "objective denomination" in the sense that people officially identify with it and the organizations related to it are populous enough and prominent it to make it a religion by itself, quite independent of mainstream Christianity.
:p
That would raise Christians to 51% and lower atheists to something under 21%. Also, his 'missing religions that represent larger portions of the population as compared with atheists' is quite irrelevant. He's probably listing the religious affiliations with the 4 highest divorce rates or something like that (no idea, I can't read minds
In fact, I just saw that I was replying to AC and I raise my hat to you good sir for the quite excellent trolling. That's 5 minutes of my time I'll never get back
I think it's also fair to say that postmodernism is particularly challenging for those with a strong commitment to the scientific worldview, because some elements of postmodernism have challenged the more extreme claims made of what science can achieve.
Challenging them is all very well, but in the end doesn't really matter because in the scientific worldview, Nature is the final arbiter in the matter. From that point of view, everything speculative (which includes a lot of observational physics as opposed to experimental physics) can only be provisionally taken as 'correct'. There is therefore a fundamental difference between the 'correctness' of a theory as verified by experiments with control over the subject matter vs. ones that occur naturally (supernovae for instance) and that we observe indirectly in a manner that requires us to use certain other theories to perform the measurement. Strangely enough, it is true also of collider experiments. Consider how much physics goes into merely deducing the trajectories of particles in such experiments. If you're trying to look for exotic particles under extreme conditions where you expect known theories to break down, does it still make sense to use the standard model to calculate trajectories and energies? It's not as bad as all that of course, since there are iterative ways to do things and self-consistency checks and so on but you the dilemma.
:p Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Anyway, I ramble. What I really wanted was to ask you for recommended reading in 'sensible postmodernism' where they seriously tackle the issues you touched upon (instead of wallowing in mindless techno-babble a la Deepak Chopra - or Sokal's cretins). The terrain is packed with nonsense and I would rather not step in it more than I have to
Business owners care about profit primarily, not artistic integrity. Ever worked at a startup? It's not like there's a dozen artists and coders that run the company. Rather, those employees own a small share in it, while the investors own most and the board makes all the major decisions.
If it's all so delicate and the board has so much power, I can see why most startups are one-hit wonders. Again, that makes me very skeptical about the probable bright futures of these so-called legends if only the big bad ogre hadn't acquired them.
Things like Google where the primary developers retain majority share while a company grows to any size are extreme edge cases.
Yes. 'Extreme edge cases' that include every single successful IT company since the computer was launched in the first place. Sure, not every such venture succeeds (that's rather obvious), but almost every single successful venture was once such a small venture. Your attempt to turn a universal phenomenon into a handful of isolated cases is quite amusing.
That is when suddenly the market starts hurting and companies making worse crap end up making more money, like really good games being crippled or killed because they threaten Windows market dominance in some way by promoting standards compliant APIs or cross platform development tools and practices.
I have no quarrel with you on the standards end of things but I really don't think it makes sense to complain about a luxury good (games) and expect people to feel all outraged about it. While I would probably agree with you personally about what games are 'good' and what are trash (having grown up Legend and Sierra and the beginning of the consoles - Atari and NES) but clearly most people today don't agree with us as they continue to blow money on the trash and keep the 'evil companies' afloat while killing the 'good guys' (ok, some snark here). The people seem to have spoken and all we can do is rage impotently at the philistines with joysticks.
I do wish people would remember that in this country at least, it takes two sides to make a business transaction - the buyer and the seller.
Sure it does, but one side has all the money and power that's not much comfort.
The point is that the ONE good thing about small startups is their legendary freedom. If they really believed in their product and their creativity (which is really what my 'artistic integrity' comment was aimed at), they would shun any buyout offers - not because of any principle - but simply because they believed they could run the frigging goliaths out of business a decade down the road. THAT is what separates the one hit wonder from a BUSINESS LEADER.
The whole refrain of "MS bought it and it's ruined", while containing a tiny kernel of truth, is ultimately based on flawed logic.
It's not based on logic at all. It's an observed phenomenon. Let's see Bungie has the next generation of their innovative products as playable demos on multiple platforms, then MS buys them and nothing is released for years then, what comes out only runs on Windows and has fewer features not only than the demoes they had shown but than the previous generation of those games. There's no logic being applied here, it's just what happened again and again.
Ah! You bit. I'm glad. If what you said is true and the industry has sen this time and time again, these same people continue to sell out to MS, clearly not giving a shit about their precious products. You are absolutely right that we the consumers lose out in the deal and I'm not an idiot to argue about that FACT. What I'm more irritated by is the complete absence of blame where the SELLER is concerned. As if they were perfectly justified in selling out but the big bad MS was clearly a monster for daring to acquire another company.
I think philosophy is a better sparring partner than religion, because that's one of its tasks -- to challenge assumptions and to tighten up reasoning (ok, two of its tasks).
True. I just hope the postmodern school (Sokal's Fashionable Nonsense was as depressing as it was funny) will eventually fade away to the obscurity it deserves and some actual philosophers start doing this job again. You know? We expect this kind of crap from the religs. It hurts when the philosophers start going mad hatter on you :(. I recall the joy of reading Spinoza, Leibniz and even Descartes and feeling that these were men who actually yearned to understand the world around them. The postmodern hack writing exudes the "I couldn't give a good goddamn about reality" stink that never leads to any any new understanding.
Considering that the term itself (which you were careful not to spell out) stands for "Intelligence Quotient", it is a bit disingenuous to try to distance it from intelligence. That aside, I see no problem with your explanation. It seems to be just another casualty (among thousands others) of the scientific naming process gone horribly wrong.
And by the way, it is not that we can't define intelligence. It is simply that once defined, there is a tendency to try to cram too much meaning and value judgments into that definition. This renders definitions of contentious subjects fluid and ultimately useless as they never settle into an equilibrium of consensus. I've had this sort of argument before about 'life'. Pragmatic, working definitions exist in biology (just as they do for 'intelligence') but people refuse to accept them because they want to imbue these (attractive) terms with every possible meaning they can - in most cases, compensating for abilities they don't have by appending said definitions with qualities they do have.
Sociologically reasonable, but wreaks havoc with any attempt at a rational and objective understanding of human ability. Rule of thumb - anytime a metric is used for something concrete (like a job or even mating acceptability), expect people to pull this kind of dirty trick. Have you ever met people (why is it usually women?) who claimed they were vegetarian and ate only fish and vegetables? Or the hangers-on in the so-called 'Green movement' sweeping the world these days? Hell, going back to my 'life' example, I wouldn't be surprised if when zombies finally starting coming out of their graves, the first thing they do is redefine 'life' so it includes them. And then yell "braaaaaaaains" but what can ya do? It's just their low IQ.
You've put together a lovely homage to MS's buying out and ruining of good game companies since every good game you came up with was developed by a company that MS bought out after they made something good, or which you thought was made by MS but was actually not. More than half the companies no longer exist having been mothballed by MS.
Since it has been so obvious that companies are ruined when MS buys them (I've been hearing this for the past 10+ years), these small company owners clearly don't give a F*** about their artistic integrity. If they had such incredibly low confidence in themselves that they sold out to the evil Goliath instead of continuing to make great products and profiting off them, why should I believe that they had anything left to offer? I do wish people would remember that in this country at least, it takes two sides to make a business transaction - the buyer and the seller. The whole refrain of "MS bought it and it's ruined", while containing a tiny kernel of truth, is ultimately based on flawed logic. If these companies really had more innovation to offer the world and they felt it could be profitable, they would not have sold out to MS.
That isn't true at all...how many people do you know who sit there saying they have to quit, it's disgusting, etc while they have a cig in their mouth? I have personally known a number of people like that (all of whom smoked more than a pack a day, btw)
I wouldn't take that too seriously. That's just the socially acceptable way of indulging in a vice. Call it a ritual self-punishment if you will as payment for continuing the vice.
You should keep in mind though that your 'health' is usually taken to mean the state of your body, which includes the brain. It is quite plausible that the physiological effects of smoking extend to the brain. In any case, that's a risk you take.
Doing something you know is bad for you != low intelligence
That's why I distinguish between 'potential intelligence' and 'kinetic intelligence' (especially when judging myself - my kinetic intelligence is rather poor for instance :p). I trust the distinction is clear?
Nice. I think that certainly is part of it. The last paragraph is particularly poignant in light of an argument I was involved in a few days ago on here about how even scientific fact can become just another dogma to be followed unless a person actually works out a theorem himself/herself or at the very least watches someone else do this in detail.
;-). As a wise webcomic artist once wrote - 'Science is limited by its refusal to make stuff up. That's what gives religion its edge'. That's an edge I gladly forfeit.
I was arguing then about the necessity of mathematics as well as empirical evidence as the two pillars of real science. I can see now how that naturally extends to the third paragraph you quoted above. It is clearly no accident that a PhD candidate's rite of passage is the thesis defense. It is also why scientific ideas get stronger and more robust over time - this merciless yet dispassionate attack from within that tempers the steel as only a trial by fire can (mangled metaphor alert! - but it's 5am so the grammar gods forgive).
In a sense then, I guess what I was trying to articulate (now that you've given me the framework to think about it), is that religion, while it may have nothing meaningful to say about Nature, plays a crucial role in being the constant opposition. It keeps us honest (though that is not its purpose) - an important thing when you consider how tempting it is for science to lie for the good of humanity.
To drag another analogy into the fray, it is science's sparring partner with the added twist that it's got a horseshoe in its glove. While that may hurt from time to time, it provides us a greater incentive to make sure the punch doesn't land
I see what you're saying but I think you misunderstand me. It is not that I think the religs' ground is worthy of examination or that I think anything new will be gained there. It's simply that their very existence provides an emotional incentive for debunkers to do their work. While there is an infinite number of things a scientist could look into, the actual number of things is quite short considering the constraints he/she faces (funding, interest, etc.) Religion and the few dark spots on the map it represents provides an emotional incentive to try to find scientific explanations for phenomena. Now, the value in debunking such things is negligible but consider the collateral gain in knowledge as a result (in this very story for example).
If NDEs had existed but religs (and a LOT of new age flakes) hadn't made such a big deal over them in terms of supporting their beliefs using them, how much importance would it have gained? Would these researchers have been quite so interested in this problem? Now we know something more about brain chemistry. Scientific explanations of previously religious phenomena do little to bring rationality to the world, but the gain in knowledge is tremendous. I've always been a fan of using an irrelevant emotional response as raw fuel to drive me in an intellectually important but not as emotionally exciting direction.
This is probably a weak example. A better one is in psychology (why people believe weird things) or in evolutionary biology (why does humanity have the religion bug so firmly entrenched within it?).
I know these seem like weak arguments. Like I said, this is not all I have to say but I have a really hard time articulating this particular feeling I have about the utility of the existence of religion (if not religion itself) to science. I think it's crucial though. Almost like irrationality needs to be present in the world so that people can escape it and grow stronger as a result. I would be truly sad to see it disappear entirely (though it won't happen for millennia more, if ever), if only for the same reason we store the smallpox virus.
I know you're joking but I should say that calculus and error analysis (part of statistics) are quite solidly intertwined. So, yes. Any practicing scientist does use calculus, though sometimes it comes disguised as statistical analysis. How about curve fitting? Least squares analysis rests firmly on calculus. So, you might not be doing dy/dx or contour integrals but you are using calculus even in the social sciences. If you don't see that explicitly, it just means you're using a packaged tool for the purpose (which is fine - reinventing the wheel is a good exercise, but necessary only in the classroom - elsewhere it's optional).
You are, unfortunately correct. However, I for one am satisfied to see the ground that the religs stand on shrink steadily, though asymptotically to nothing. I won't begrudge them that last minuscule standing space as long as I have the rest of reality to call home ;-).
;-)
Note also that as a practical matter, irrationality provides a substantial incentive for people who embody rationality. It scares me sometimes, but we owe a great deal to the religs for pointing out exactly what needs to be looked at. They're like the guys with the flags on golf courses
It doesn't say anything about heaven itself.
Quite right. But then again, if 'proof' were a valid criterion in religion, nothing would say anything about heaven :p. It does say a LOT about the 'evidence' that people present to 'prove' the existence of heaven. Wanna believe in heaven? - go for it. Just don't do anything as inane as attempting to justify it rationally (as so many people are wont to do).
It's rather amusing how the descriptions of heaven have had to be upgraded every generation (and in the process made more vague and abstract) as reality catches up by making life on earth better and better. Heaven for a second century man would probably have been close to living on modern day Earth - even in a third world slum. Heaven for a second century noblewoman would have been close to living in any western country after the middle ages as an ordinary woman.
Further, (and this is purely speculative so I welcome any facts from y'all) it may have to do with other ebook retailers putting the pressure on the publishers to stop Amazon from marking down these prices because the disparity in prices is REALLY REALLY REALLY freaking absurd. Have you compared prices between Amazon and any of the other retailers recently (like Mobipocket.com, fictionwise, cyberread, B&N, ebooks.com(iirc?), etc.)? I always do before buying ebooks and the difference is unmistakable. I wonder how many people have chosen the Kindle over the Nook purely because of this?
:p
I guess the publishers (years of experience working against them I fear) might be thinking that Amazon couldn't possibly stay afloat with this pricing model and don't want to see the other retailers go out of business as well. I for one am glad that Baen (the only publisher with any degree of sense about ebooks) has a few authors I actually like - they actually sell DRM free books and do very well. You guys should check out Eric Flint's writing on the matter (http://www.baen.com/library/). It is very refreshing to see an author (with the full support of his publishing house) writing something so exquisitely sensible about DRM and piracy and the whole "authors getting ripped off" crop of shenanigans.
Just remember that corporations, while proclaiming the virtues of the free market on the one hand, will gladly blow anyone (including the government or even their competitors) for a bit of protectionist backscratching. In fact, this whole Amazon debacle stinks to me of a Survivor-like scenario where the best people are knocked out early. There are no Hank Reardens or Dagny Taggarts in the real world - the sooner we accept it and move on, the lesser the number of ulcers we have to suffer through
I will stress again (for skimmers - NTTAWWT) - this is purely speculative. It seems plausible to me but I have no facts about this.
Undisciplined people can't do great irreversible damage!
That's what I thought about the US. Hell, 8 years of incompetence and the country strong as ever (back in 2008) - I figured that's a great stress test for the economy. And then it just collapsed. Yes, a national economy largely runs on autopilot, but the reason for it is the tremendous inertia it has a result of its sheer size. What one must remember is that a very large object, while stable in motion, is equally difficult to divert when it's rushing headlong off a cliff. I guess while the undisciplined people themselves probably can't do much damage (I don't think I would blame Dubya personally for most of the things that are wrong with the economy today), they serve as a catalyst for the real opportunists to do the damage. In his case, he tended to collect people based on loyalty rather than ability - hardly a good choice for running something as complex as a country. I think that was his only real crime (everything else was politics as usual) and that incompetence did do a lot of irreversible damage.
To get back to India, while a 1984-style fiasco is not possible (for the reason you mentioned), it has led to unscrupulous bastards (usually criminals) taking over local governance in many of the major cities. The local and state governments are strong as compared to the central, but they are hives of corruption because they are largely isolated from the greater political scene. At this moment in its history, corporations are probably the only constructive force left in India.
Thank you. That's exactly what it was.
;-)
Unfortunately, my snark-generator wasn't working too well when I wrote it and it came off as too sincere in the iPad-bashing department. Indeed, the thing actually looks quite nice and I would probably even get it if I had any use for it and if it was in my price range, neither of which are true at the moment
Let me ask you something in advance of the inevitable comments, for a chance: do you complain because the firmware in your TV set, microwave oven, and dishwasher is "locked down," too?
You're right. Considering that the tablet in question is about as versatile as the appliances you mentioned, I now have no complaints about it being locked down. Just lock it away somewhere and my joy will be complete.
I suspect string theory is wrong because it's too complex. I think at the core of all physics must be simplicity. If you get as complicated as string theory I think you're heading down the wrong path. Physics, when distilled, should be elegant. When Einstein proposed mass-energy equivalence with a formula it changed the world - not because it was a complex relationship that only physicists could understand, but because it was so incredibly simple that it HAD to be right.
No, it changed the world because it worked. It predicted certain things that were observed to be dead-on. If it's science we're talking about, beauty must always take a back seat to utility (in the sense that a principle works - not so much that it should be useful to humanity). The halls of physics are littered with the corpses of beautiful theories that (unfortunately) failed this test.
There is a difference between 'simple' and 'easy'. The former has to do with the structure (of a theory or principle) and the latter, with actually being able to work with it at a mathematical level. Given that distinction, all physics is simple, even String theory. Depending on your level of expertise, no part of physics might be easy. People often misinterpret this frustration by concluding that the principle itself is complex (or worse, complicated).
And there really is no reason why the GUT (if it exists) should be simple. We can only say at this point that so far, the principle of simplicity seems to have worked well in finding useful theories and there is good reason to think that that will continue. But to believe that this is necessarily true (and more than a few physicists are guilty of this) is perverting science into mysticism.
Fixed that for you. Try to focus on what's really important, will you?
While I'm no lovesick fan of string theory, fair's fair - there hasn't really been much funding for it until 5-6 years ago when Brian Greene's book came out and there was an explosion of interest in it (this was related to some real mathematical progress in the field by Witten that really raised some hopes). Before that, it was really struggling as a field - most funding was private in the form of endowed professorships or positions at places like the IAS in Princeton.